Art As Resilience includes writing.
This Month's Dates for Let's Write Together!
My dear Subscriber
Thank you for being here with me. It means a lot.
Substack has changed dramatically since I started my ‘stack 3 years ago this month. While it is not as cozy and connective as it used to be, you being here with me keeps me returning and developing my content and skills.
Subscribers (predominantly Free) to Scars of Gold are up to 755 now, with over 1500 Followers, so I’m not quite speaking into the wind. Comments and likes are way down from the engagement I used to get, yet this still feels like a great place to be. I am still committed and finding new, useful, well-written and even fun content. Jamie Oliver, anyone?!
Let’s Write Together!
As always, my gratitude resides in offering Let’s Write Together! every month. It is a wonderful opportunity for me to meet you, thank you and hold space for writing and sharing. I meet with regular participants and a variety of drop-ins. It is always a small and perfectly formed gathering. Love it!
As a participant, if you have a reflection on the experience, I am gathering testimonials for when I share about it. Simply reply to this email if something comes to mind. Even a quick phrase will help - so it’s not always my voice people hear.
Thank you! The dates and Zoom links for this month are below. Hope you can make it.
Art As Resilience
I am using the top photo of this post as a pleasing example of what is called “Neuroaesthetics” - something in your environment that has a neurological effect on you. This one makes me smile and feel delight. You? It is a bookshelf I stumbled upon in a tiny (yet tardis-like), and chaotic bookstore in Hay-on-Wye - the secondhand bookstore mecca in Wales - which was overwhelming me until I saw that colour care.
Seeing some books in a room usually calms me. I feel the wonder of their content and graphics on the spine get me curious. Too many, piled in corners gets stressful!
Books and writing are also art. (Something we recovering intellectuals sometimes have to grapple with). I weave expressive writing into collaborative workshops we call Art As Resilience, with visual artist Sarah Guest, who facilitates the drawing and colour elements.
We discuss what art does to our nervous system and how we can create resilience by using it intentionally. It is our passion-project, because I firmly believe that if we create often, we keep ourselves healthy in this unhealthy, patriarchal culture where money rules and art gets relegated to a nice add-on.
The workshops are mostly live, (next one in Prince George, British Columbia on 26th April), but we are starting to create online content which is a lot of fun - please check out the brand new Facebook Page or Instagram Account and you will start to see what we are up to.
Sarah and I are doing what we can to remind humans that art as an embodied process is vital to our existence! So, join me this month on Zoom - links below and…
Be Well, Create Often, and with love, EmmaJ